HRK News Bureau | New Delhi | Wednesday, 31 May 2017

In line with its plan to provide improved services, the company is looking to hire product managers, data scientists and designers.

In an endeavour to innovate in payments and bookings, and enhance driver and rider experiences, Uber India is looking to increase its talent capacities in the respective areas. For this, the cab aggregator is reportedly looking to hire more software engineers for its engineering centres in India.

Uber currently has two engineering centres in India – in Bengaluru and Hyderabad – where the teams work on aspects such as safety, payments, driver growth, maps, vehicle telematics and rider experience, among others. It has a total of 100 employees in these two locations.

In line with its plan to provide improved services, the company is looking to hire product managers, data scientists and designers, although the number of people being hired is not clear. The company is also trying to collaborate with National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) to enable customers to pay for rides using UPI.

The integration of unified payment interface (UPI) on its platform will be beneficial to the company in the long run as it will allow customers to link accounts of any bank (participating in UPI) to create a UPI ID and instantly make payments in a safe and secure manner. Ola already allows users to pay for rides using UPI.

In India, the US-based cab company faces stiff competition from the home-grown firm Ola and hence, it has been consciously focusing on developing solutions catering to Indian market expectations and needs. For instance, it introduced cash payment mode for the Indian market.

Uber also faces other market-specific challenges such as sporadic internet connectivity and poor mapping coverage, for which the company is apparently trying to develop solutions that can be extended to other markets facing similar situations.

India is the largest market outside the US for Uber and accounts for about 12 per cent of all Uber trips globally, as of last year. The company operates in 29 cities in this country.